Prof. Dr. Sven Francque is currently Chairman of the Department of Gastroenterology and Hepatology of the University Hospital Antwerp and Full Professor of Medicine at the Faculty of Medicine and Health Sciences of the University of Antwerp in Belgium. He has a longstanding interest and expertise in nonalcoholic fatty liver disease and conducted basic research focusing on the vascular changes in steatosis and their contribution to disease progression. His research unit continues to study pathophysiological mechanisms of NASH. He also conducts clinical research, and his unit is a partner in several research consortia supported by the European Commission. He and his unit participate in most of the clinical trials in the field, and he is a scientific committee member involved in the design of several phase 2 and one of the current phase 3 trials in NAFLD. He is a senior clinical researcher for the Research Fund of the Flemish government. He is board member of several scientific societies and currently also scientific coordinator of the Belgian week of Gastroenterology. Prof. Dr. Francque obtained his MD at the University of Antwerp, Belgium, in 1994 and was subsequently trained in internal medicine and in gastroenterology and hepatology at the Antwerp University Hospital, Belgium and at the Department of Hepatology of the Beaujon hospital, Clichy, France.

Aleksander Krag, MD, PhD, MBA, Professor and Head of Hepatology, Director of Odense Liver Research Centre at Odense University Hospital. Chair of Health Sciences at the Danish Institute of Advanced Studies (DIAS) at University of Southern Denmark, Associate editor at Danish Medical Journal and Editor in Chief at Medicin.dk.

My passion is research with main focus on liver fibrosis, complications to cirrhosis, alcoholic liver disease and microbiome. I’m involved in and hold leader positions in a number of large research collaborations in liver diseases, including being director of FLASH: Fibrosis Fatty Liver and Steatohepatitis Research Centre Odense, Coordinator in the H2020 project GALAXY: Gut and Liver Axis in Alcoholic Liver Fibrosis and partner in the H2020 projects MicrobPredict, LiverScreen and The International Human Microbiome Action and PI in the Center for Functional Genomics and Tissue Plasticity. I’m involved in several international organisational activities including being member of the Scientific Committee of the Baveno group and serve as UEG representative in the European Medicines Agency. My research output and metrics are available at PubMed, Scopus, ORCID, Publons and Google.

Helena Cortez-Pinto (MD, PhD) is a specialist in Gastroenterology, dedicated predominantly to Hepatology, mainly steatotic liver disease, nutrition, and public health. She is full professor in Faculdade de Medicina, Universidade de Lisboa (FMUL). Director of Clínica Universitária de Gastrenterologia, FMUL, and Coordinator of the Hepatology Unit, of Unidade Local de Saúde Santa Maria, Lisboa, Portugal. She is Director of the Scientific Council of FMUL. Past- President of United European Gastroenterology (UEG) (2022-2023). Senior editor of Seminars of Liver disease and member of the “Editorial Board” of Journal of Hepatology. Published around two hundred articles in indexed Journals, including JAMA, Gastroenterology, Hepatology, Journal of Hepatology and Liver International, with an h-index of 54. 

Christophe Moreno is Professor and Chairman of the Department of Gastroenterology, Hepatopancreatology and Digestive Oncology in CUB Hôpital Erasme, Université Libre de Bruxelles, in Belgium since 2023. He completed his medical training in the Faculty of Medicine of the Université Libre de Bruxelles and achieved his PhD in the Laboratory of Experimental Gastroenterology (Université Libre de Bruxelles) in 2007. He was graduated from Université Paris-Sud with summa cum laude in June 2007 in Réanimation hépatique. He is former president of the Belgian Association for the study of the Liver, member of European Association for the Study of the Liver and the American Association for the Study of Liver disease. He is Associate editor for UEG Journal since 2019, and was Associate editor for Journal of Hepatology between 2014 and 2019. 

Christophe Moreno has published more than 120 articles in prominent journals including the New England Journal of Medicine, JAMA, Gastroenterology, Hepatology and Journal of Hepatology. His main research interests are focused on alcohol-related liver disease, advanced cirrhosis and Liver Transplantation. 

Prof. Gema Frühbeck (RNutr, MD, PhD) combines everyday work in the clinical setting as Co-Director of the Obesity Area of the Clínica Universidad de Navarra (Pamplona, Spain), with basic research as Head of the Metabolic Research Laboratory of the University of Navarra and Project Leader of the CIBEROBN (Centre of Excellence Network in Obesity and Nutrition of the Spanish Institute of Health). The efforts of her group are focused on studying the impact of adiposity on the development of comorbidities. Frühbeck’s group has taken the step forward of using body composition measurements routinely in the clinical assessment of patients in order to analyse the relevance of body fat -beyond BMI- in comorbidity development. In 1997 with a fellowship grant of The Royal Society Frühbeck performed a postdoctoral stay in Prof. Andrew Prentice’s Energy Group at the MRC Dunn Clinical Nutrition Centre in Cambridge, UK. In the last years Prof. Frühbeck has been recipient of numerous awards and honours among others: The Nutrition Society’s Silver Medal, UK (2000), “Doctor Laguna Serrano” Prize, Royal National Academy of Medicine, Madrid (2005), “Sir David Cuthbertson Medal” of the Nutrition Society, UK (2005), “AMA Prize” on Nutrition and Health of the Medical Association (2007), Pfizer Prize for a Professional Career in the field of Neuroendocrinology (2009), Commendation of her book “Obesity: Science to Practice” published by Wiley-Blackwell in the British Medical Association Book Awards (2010), Lilly Distinguished Career Award in Endocrinology & Nutrition (2011), Albert Struyvenberg Medal of the European Society for Clinical Investigation (2013) and British Medical Association Award in Medical Leadership (2017) Group Trajectory Award of the Spanish Society of Endocrinology & Nutrition (2017), NAOS Obesity Strategy Accesit in the hospital setting (2020), Danone Prize (2022). Prof. Frühbeck has served as Secretary, President-Elect, President and Co-Chair of the Scientific Advisory Board of the European Association for the Study of Obesity (EASO).

Bart Staels, PhD., is director of the Inserm Unit UMR1011 with laboratories at the Lille Pasteur Institute and Medical Faculty campus. 

After his doctorate at the Univ.Leuven, Belgium, he completed his training at the UCSF, San Francisco and RPR, Paris. He is Senior Member of the Institut Universitaire de France, co-founder and board member of the European Genomic Institute for Diabetes (EGID, Lille), member of the French National Academy of Pharmacy and the Belgian Royal Academy of Medicine, and past-president of the French Atherosclerosis Society. 

Awards: the EAS Young Investigator Award, the CNRS Bronze Medal, the Lifetime Achievement Award of the British Atherosclerosis Society, the “Barré” prize from the Faculté de Pharmacie of Montreal (2007), the “JP Binet” prize from the Fondation pour la Recherche Médicale (2011), the “Distinguished Leader in Insulin Resistance” award (2012), the ICBL Laurens van Deenen award (2017) and the European Atherosclerosis Society 2024 “Anitschkow Prize”. 

B.Staels’ research covers the fields of obesity, diabetes, hepatic and cardiovascular diseases focussing on molecular pharmacology of these cardio-metabolic diseases. He particularly studies the role of nuclear receptors in the control of inflammation and lipid and glucose homeostasis as well as the transcriptional mechanisms involved. 

B.Staels has published >900 articles, abstracts and book chapters (Google h-index: 186; >136000 citations).  He received the ISI citations award and is a 2018, 2022 and 2023 Web-of-Science Highly Cited Researcher.